The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - My 2024 in Review. Net Worth Breakdown, Investments & More⏐Ep. #112

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

In this episode, I'm giving you a peek behind the curtain with my 2024 year in review. I'm talking about all the crazy stuff that happened, from launching the tree biz bootcamp to blowing up my online content. I'm breaking down my net worth, (not exact numbers), I'm getting into percentages and where all my money is at. I'm also going to tell you what my plans are for the future, including maybe switching gears with my content and what my new health and fitness goals are. It's a raw look at my year, and I think you'll find it interesting.Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 Introduction00:27 2024 Year in Review01:41 Launching the Podcast02:51 Partnership with Blue Metric04:16 Investment Strategies and Lessons10:00 Real Estate Ventures14:14 Reflections and Future Goals17:17 Content Creation Insights18:40 Closing Thoughts and Gratitude

Welcome to the Kerner office. I am sitting here in San Francisco. It's 10.51 p.m. My family's sleeping up in the hotel room and I've got to get a podcast out. But it's okay because I've been thinking about this one for hours and I'm really excited about it. If you're watching this on YouTube, the quality sucks because I'm using my MacBook webcam. If you're listening on audio, the audio sucks because I'm using a $15 Bluetooth mic. So just bear with me. This won't be a very long episode. I'm going to do my 2024 year in review and I'm going to break down my net worth, what it's comprised of. Why? What investments I made in myself, in others, and anything, and what I'm looking forward to about next year. This is stuff I don't talk about that often, so I thought you might find it interesting. And we'll see how this goes.

2024 was an incredibly transformative year. If you listen to the Holdco Bros. that's coming out, I think in just a couple days, you'll hear just a little bit of overlap. That's Nick and I talking about our year together. And this is more talking about what my year look like. as an entrepreneur, as a dad, as an investor, but there shouldn't be that much overlap. So, 2024 started off with a bang. We launched our tree biz boot camp. We hosted about 20 people, half virtual, half in person in Dallas.

We spent about 60 hours together, give or take. We ate meals together. We basically rented out a conference room in a we work and we talked about home services, and it was a lot of fun. And a couple of those guys started tree businesses based on that boot camp, which is awesome. it was super stressful to put that on in person. It was a lot of work. We didn't make that much money from it.

But it was also awesome at the same time. And I may do something again like that in the future. That was January. In February, I launched this podcast about 11 months ago and YouTube channel and Instagram and TikTok and all that. And it started off kind of slow. And I remember in those first episodes, if you heard me, I said, this is going to be a 10 episode test.

And it's going to be the Dave Ramsey for entrepreneurs. And we're going to see where this goes. And I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed doing it. And the Q&A went through a few different iterations. We did live streaming. We did me just reading off questions. And then I took a break from it for six months.

And then a month ago, I started it again with just pre-recorded audio questions. So that way you can actually hear a caller. And you know all this. You know all this. So I'm super glad I did this podcast. Started out with two episodes a week. And then I thought, man, there's a lot. I want to get out there to the world.

Let's just go ahead and do three episodes a week. And that's why I'm recording. this at 10.55 p.m. in San Francisco while I head up the West Coast on an Amtrak sleeper train with my wife and four kids because I don't want to miss. I don't want to miss a day, even though you guys would just go on with your life. I just don't want to do it. I want to stay consistent. So this podcast has been transformative and I'm having a lot of fun. All right. And then in January, I also partnered with the guys at Blue metric. That's my RV Park stuff. I met Jeff and John in December. and they had acquired about eight RV parks over the previous 12 months.

And they knew that I had experience in the space. They saw me on Twitter. And they said, hey, let's do a deal together. So I flew down to Louisiana. I filmed some content. I did some due diligence on both this deal and on John and Jeff and Blue metric. And the deal went great. And I raised some money from a couple tweets.

And then we've done like eight more deals since then. So now today, Blue metric owns about 26 parks. I'm in almost half of them, maybe 10 or so, give or take. And I've been able to raise about $4 million almost exclusively from Twitter. Without pushing it that much, you know, I've probably tweeted about investment opportunities once per month on average. But that has been an awesome experience. I couldn't have partnered with better guys.

Our deals are going great. We have $150 million worth of parks now. And we're actually hoping to slow down a little next year, believe it or not, because operations are hard and it's gotten a little hairy. But this endeavor with Blue metric has really boosted my net worth for the year. So let's talk about that for a minute. I'm not going to tell you what my net worth is because I don't want to, but I will talk percentages and break down what I invest in and why I invest in it.

So when it comes to stocks, I only have about one and a half, of my net worth in stocks. And I'm the type of guy where I feel much, much more pain if I sell a winning stock too early than if I lose money on a stock. And the same is said with any investment. And so I'll never forget March 2020. I was sitting in a hotel room. I just ran 114 mile race, which was a three-quarter mile lap around an orange cone in the middle of nowhere, just north of Houston. It was called Jackalope Jam, and I did the 24-hour event. So you just run three-quarters of a mile back and forth, back and forth, back and forth for 24 hours straight. And whoever runs the most in 24 hours wins. And I actually won, which was awesome. And I set the course record

at the time, which was about 114 miles. And this was right when COVID was just going nuts. And I went back, it might have been late February, I think it was February. And stocks just started crashing. It was ugly. And I was probably a little delirious from, you know, running for 24 hours straight. And I was sick. And my family was sick. And we were in this hotel room eating Papa Johns. And I opened my Robin Hood app and everything was tanking.

I bought Tesla early. I bought Nvidia early, Shopify, Facebook, all the winners. I was up big on all of them. And they just started tanking. And no one knew what was going to happen. And I was just scared. And I was like, okay, I'm selling. I sold everything, which was the dumbest thing.

I don't do that anymore. And even though my Tesla was up like 3x, it's 7xed again after that. So I would have been up 21x on Tesla. InVity, let's not even talk about it. I refuse to even check Shopify, same. That's painful for me. And I did that not quite as badly with Bitcoin. I first bought Bitcoin in 2016.

I doubled my money. I sold most of it, some of it, because I didn't know anything about it. I didn't really believe in it. I just wanted to make money. And then I really learned about it. And once I learned about it, I was like, Chris, you. idiot. Why did you sell that? I felt like a genius too. I doubled my money in like a few months. This was 2016 right before the bull market that go around got really hot. And so then I bought back

in and I was like, okay, Chris, you're never doing that again. You're never selling your Bitcoin because I just, I hate selling too early. And so I went pretty hard on Bitcoin and Ethereum and light coin in 2016. And I lost some of it just due to stupid mistakes or trading it for ICOs or dumb projects, but the vast majority of it, I still have. And so that's my, that's my investing claim to fame. $680 was what I first bought Bitcoin. And eight years later, that seems like a genius move. But at the time, it felt like an idiot move because, you know, Bitcoin had been $6 and then 60 cents. And so, or $60. So paying $6.80 for a digital token that no one knew anything about felt idiotic. But I am never selling it, especially now that you can

earn interest on it, you can borrow against it. I'm not selling my Bitcoin. You'll have to pry it from my cold debt hands. Same with Ethereum. My portfolio is basically, call it 50% Bitcoin, 40% Ethereum, 10% stupid moonshot bets. And I also own a mutant ape NFT, if you know what those are. I paid, I paid 60 grand for it. It's worth seven or eight grand, maybe 10 right now. But I'm not selling that either because whatever. I'd rather just, I'd rather go to zero and sell it too early. Anyway, so I'm heavily weighted in crypto. It is about 15% of my overall net worth, which would give some people anxiety, but honestly, it used to be closer to 80%, but I made a couple dumb decisions with it. I borrowed against it four or five years ago to buy more. And I got margin called on some of it,

not all of it, but some of it. So that was one of the dumb decisions that I just referenced. And then some ICOs that didn't go my way. But most of it, I still have the original crypto that I bought in 2016 and I bought along the way as well. And I'll never sell it. Anyway, back to stocks. I'm off on a couple tangents here. The stocks I buy now or the stocks I've purchased since 2020, I am not selling. I will never sell. I've changed my philosophy. And I know everyone knows that, that you shouldn't day trade and you should just buy the index fund, but I'm not going to buy the index fund because I have a higher risk tolerance. And I know that I'm not going to sell it. I haven't made that mistake in almost five years now. I won't make it again. And so if I buy a stock,

I plan to die with that stock. Now, if something drastic happened and I had to sell it to pay my mortgage, I would sell it along with my crypto. Of course, my family's well-being comes first. So today, my stocks are only about one and a half percent in my portfolio. My crypto is about 10 times that, 15% of my portfolio. And I own my biggest holdings are Coinbase and Tesla by far. And I keep buying Tesla and I keep buying Coinbase. And thankfully, my two biggest holdings are also my best performing holdings, which works out nicely. I also own Zoom, Peloton, Facebook, Chipotle. And my portfolio is up a good bit. I've definitely beat the market by quite a bit, but I buy stocks very, very rarely and very impulsively, to be honest, I don't do any research. I see something's dipping that I

believe in and I buy more. That's it. So not investment advice. None of this is investment advice, which probably sounds obvious because you're probably shaking your head and I think I'm an idiot right now, but that's okay. I don't care. Okay, so we're up to 16 and a half percent of my net worth, well, we got to talk about real estate. I am including my personal home in my net worth because it's a significant number and I'm of the camp that it is part of your net worth. So my personal home, I have a very decent chunk of equity in my home. We built it in 2016. We've refinanced it once. We pulled out six figures. It just continues to appreciate. We live in a good area. Great school district. Very supply constrained, very close to Dallas.

Very family friendly. In fact, it's family friendly, but the families are getting price. out. One of our elementary schools just closed down because young families can't really afford to live here anymore. So we're bullish on the area. I never want to sell this house either. It's a very unique property. And I plan to one day turn my home, probably, maybe, into a wedding venue. I've referenced this a couple times before, but two, three years ago now, we were forced to move to Houston as a family so my daughter could get a double lung transplant and we put our home on Airbnb. And a lot of people use it as a wedding venue, like as a smaller wedding venue. And so we learned that there's demand for that. So that's kind of a blessing in disguise.

We'd have to get it rezoned. We'd obviously have to move out. It'd need to be a commercial property. But I think the city would be up for it. And I bought the land behind me. It's a one-acre lot with a 2,100 square foot, a shop that I rent out to a landscaping crew. And it is zoned residential. And we plan to build another home on that. So I own. I own. that land outright. There's no loan on that. So between those two properties back to back, I've got seven figures of equity there. And then we've got RV parks. At the beginning of this year, 24, I owned about half of a small RV park because me and my older business partners sold our entire portfolio across 2021 and 2022. So I had zero parks there for a while. We bought one

last year in Waco where it's on the market to sell right now. We close in about a month. If all goes well, that's the only one I owned a year ago. I owned half of it with Nick. And then I started with Blue metric and we've purchased about 10 marks together. And that is a sizable portion of my net worth, which is about another seven figures. So I'm pretty heavily weighted in real estate. And then outside of that, I've been an angel investor in some small tech deals that have been fun, that's less than 1% of my net worth. If you include some odds and ends, that's one to two percent of my net worth. And then the companies that I own, that's kind of weird. I'm always overly, overly conservative when assigning valuations to my

own companies because I had a lot of equity that looked really big on paper that ended up going to zero or being a lot smaller than I thought. So the rest of my net worth is in my own companies. And I would say my net worth grew. And I'm kind of, if it sounds like I'm kind of being wishy-washy and guessing, it's because I am kind of guessing. Like a lot of people track this maniacically with spreadsheets. I have one spreadsheet that I only look at maybe once every couple of years and I have it pulled up right now.

This doesn't take a lot of brain space for me, my net worth. It just doesn't. I like building businesses and talking about it. But my net worth definitely grew by double digits this year. Call it 30 or 40%. I'm not much of a goal setter. I wanted to be a millionaire by 30. I checked that box and I've got kind of loose goals, rough goals, but it's nothing I really

adhere to. I prefer to set goals around being consistent with things kind of like this podcast. My health and fitness goal for 2025 is to log every calorie I eat. That's it. Not to never eat sugar or never have caffeine or like I just want to be accountable to every calorie I eat because if I eat too much, I'm going to know it. Ignorance can be bliss. Ignorance can also be bad.

So I love just setting my goals around things that I can control, right? I can't control my net worth. I have some aspect of control over some of it, but no, but I can control how many businesses I start, how many videos or newsletters I publish, how many dates I go on with my wife and or kids. 2024 was an amazing, incredible year. And I think I'm going to look back on it as a pivotal moment in my life. For instance, last month, the month of November, 77 million people saw my

content in some form or fashion. I gained 270,000 followers in the month of November alone. I'm adding 8 to 10,000 new followers combined across platforms every single day. So by the end of next year, I should have 4 to 5 million followers. And I don't know what I want to do with all that yet. I don't know. I genuinely don't. I don't have this grand master plan like Alex Hormosey talks about. He wants to become a billionaire and do it all in public. I don't. I just think it's fun and it's good to have. And honestly, between me and you and the fence post, there's probably going to be a day here within the next few years where I just clock out. We used to talk about exiting the rat race as in starting a business or not relying on nine to five. But I look at that as staying offline, being offline.

That is the downside to all this. I'm always online. And I saw this meme the other day. If you remember those computer desks, those workstations we had as teenagers, if you're a millennial, you know, wood in it had a slots for all your CDs and your your gateway desktop dent there on the bottom right and your big monitor that went back two feet like that was the internet it was confined to a corner of our home and I really really missed that I love that I want to get back to that and I think large portions of society will do the same I don't want the internet in my pocket anymore or on my wrist I don't want to hold myself to anything but by that time I turned 40 I would really like to be on the internet about 80% less. And I don't know what that looks like as a content creator, but that is a goal.

That is the downside to this content stuff. You got to be online and you just get flooded with comments and ignorance and adulation and flattery and hate and everything in between. It's just a lot. And I kind of love it and I kind of hate it all at the same time. But I went from about 60,000 to 1.2 million followers in 2024. My content was viewed over half a billion times. which is just crazy. I'm also considering in a couple years just pivoting from business to church stuff, honestly, just having a church like a non-profit podcast. I wouldn't be able to bring my audience over, obviously. This is a business audience, but I think I would enjoy that as well. And it would do good to the world as well. But if I can use this content to help people start

businesses, if people can email me and say, I started this business because of what you said, because of an idea that I got from you. There's one sentence that you said. If that's you, please email me, Chris at cofounders.com. I want to know who you are. It just brings me a lot of joy. I will be monetizing this stuff in some way. I started a little bit here a month or so ago.

And I'll be doing more of that. I have to, obviously. I can't do all this for free, but it's just not a priority for me. There's so many ways to make money. Content is just one of many. As you'll hear on my hold co-pros episode, I think short-form video is one of the biggest asymmetric bets of our time to think you can just hit record for a few minutes, edit, hit

publish, and millions of people can see it. It's incredible. And no, I didn't get that way because I had 50,000 Twitter followers and I carried them all over into Instagram. I started from scratch and I published 40 or 50 videos that almost nobody saw until I found my groove. So very bullish on short form video. specifically to be used as a vehicle to get people into your orbit and then funneling them to

long form video or audio or text, right? Because there's a lot of TikTok creators out there that really don't have anything interesting to say after second 61 on their video, right? You've got to be able to go deeper on this content, which is why it's perfect for me. So I can put out a 30 second business idea. They'll find my podcast or YouTube or newsletter and then they'll read my 2,000 word newsletter or watch my hour-long podcast and hopefully think, oh, wow, this guy isn't just ideas. He has execution ideas as well. So it's really just worked out great.

If you're not on my newsletter, tkopod.com, you can subscribe. Other things we did this year, side vending, a short form video that turned into a business, selling freaking perfume vending machines of all things. I just have no idea where 2025 is going to take me. But I have a lot of fun. I'm very, very grateful to all of you. Thank you for your five-star reviews, for your kind words, kind words stand out a lot more than the mean ones, even if there might be more mean ones than I don't even know. But I'm grateful for you all.

And we'll see you around.